To ISAF, Committing Atrocities Means Only Having to Say You’re Sorry

Marine Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan, “flew to Logar province, just south of Kabul, to meet with villagers and offer his condolences for the bombing Wednesday that Afghan officials said killed 18 civilians,” reported the Washington Poston June 8.”The airstrike was called in by U.S. troops after they came under fire while pursuing a Taliban fighter in a village in the Baraki Barak district.

Allen said to the Afghans:

“I know that no apology can bring back the lives of the children or the people who perished in this tragedy and this accident, but I want you to know that you have my apology and we will do the right thing by the families,” … NATO troops often make condolence payments to the families of victims in civilian casualty incidents.

Apologizing implies you’ll try not to do the same thing in the future. Otherwise, the apology is empty. The definition of insanity is continuing air and drone strikes and expecting the results to be different each time.

NATO and the United States should just own its atrocities and its intentions to continue committing them. Because they’re certainly not going to end until we leave Afghanistan.

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We sniff out issues hiding in the foreign-policy forest and haul them back to the laboratory for inspection. We examine the anterior, posterior, and underside of an issue, as well as its shadows.

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